


200 Park Avenue

by wildechilde17



Series: The business trilogy [17]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Advent Calendar, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 04:56:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9056236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildechilde17/pseuds/wildechilde17
Summary: Clintasha Advent Calendar Day 22: Hurt/Comfort





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BereniceAndrea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BereniceAndrea/gifts), [rebecca97](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebecca97/gifts), [RABunzai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RABunzai/gifts).



He screams her name. It tears its way out of him like he has drunk bleach. It is cut glass raw, it is open wound raw, it is massacre raw.

It rips her from sleep. 

She had taken up position in the armchair. She had moved it closer after the others had left pulling it from the far corner to one side of his bed.

Stark’s new AI, the one with the lyrical Irish lilt, throws on all the lights blinding her with the sudden bright whiteness of the tower hospital room. 

“I will page Doctor…”

“No!” she snarls back uncurling herself from the chair, “Friday,” she tries more kindly, “Don’t page, don’t call anyone and turn off the damn lights.”

“Mr Barton is in distress.”

Mr Barton is sobbing. It’s the cry of a child, lost. 

“I will handle it, Friday. Turn off the lights.” 

“As you wish,” says the AI and it sounds like a Florence Nightingale dismissed by a drunk surgeon.  All of Stark’s AIs sound like they know better and are giving you enough rope to hang yourself.  Or maybe that is how they sound now. Maybe they are colored that way now, after everything, after Sokovia. 

The lights dim into absence.

“Clint,” she says, crouching down beside his head. “Clint,” she says, pulling the curled fist from his mouth and pressing it to her own cheek, “here, alive, here.”

“Tasha,” he says as he opens his eyes.  They are foggy grey and nothing else.

“Mm hmm, go back to sleep,” she says softly, “You tore open your new plastic skin and Doctor Cho can’t make you new skin right now. 

He doesn’t let go of her face. In the gloom she can see him searching her out.  He still isn’t certain she is real.  He still isn’t sure he is real. She tangles her own hand back into his and then climbs over his body to coil herself around him. “Go back to sleep and heal,” she orders.

He is damp with sweat.  The musty warmness of him overpowers the sterility of the hospital room.  She prefers it.

“I thought...” he says.  His voice is hoarse. “There was a kid, he was stuck and…”

“I know.”

“Did it…” his voice cracks open on it, “did it happen?”

“It’s never what Loki’s magic, parasite…" Gods and Monsters and nothing they should ever have had to... "algorithm said it was.”

“I know… I just… is he? The kid?” he stops himself, holding his breath.  She waits, rests her head on his shoulder and waits, “Oh… fuck.”

“Don’t, don’t do that to yourself.”

“You’d do the same thing,” he says numbly. 

She smiles against the bare skin of his neck. “Don’t use me as a model of mental wellness, ястреб.”

He breathes in. It is like a sigh.  He steels himself. “You’re here.” 

“I’m here. You can sleep.”

“And in the morning?” he asks. It is thick and inky black. It opens an abyss they cannot hope to close.

She sets her jaw, “We make amends.”

**Author's Note:**

> Merry (insert holiday here) one and all.
> 
> You may think you know where Marketplace is going now... but you don't know.


End file.
